life was devastating to me,” Sorvino told The LA Times
a year after the Weinstein story broke. Following her
1996 Oscar win for Mighty Aphrodite (the rare comedy
performance to get honoured), Sorvino appeared to fall foul
of the dreaded “Oscar Curse“, where an actor experiences
career misfortune in the years following their victory.
This reasoning is indicative of how easy it is to explain
why someone is no longer considered buzzworthy. It isn’t
a conspiracy or an insidious case of blacklisting, rather it
can be chalked up to ageing out of roles/being difficult/or
something as vague as a curse (delete where applicable).
Regardless of how many awards an actress has on her
mantlepiece, or how iconic a previous role has been, this
form of plausible deniability is an effective method for
perpetuating a narrative that protects the abuser.
Sorvino seemingly had the world at her feet after the
Academy triumph, but beyond her turn in beloved cult
comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, and
the lead in sci-fi horror Mimic, her movie profile faded
and the studio roles dried up. To be deemed difficult is a
shortcut to Hollywood purgatory. And Sorvino is not alone.“From 1992, I didn’t work again until 1995. I just kept getting
this pushback of, ‘We heard you were difficult; we heard
this or that.’ I think that that was the Harvey machine,”
Annabella Sciorra told The New Yorker in 2017. It is
impossible to know what work she would have gotten over
this three- year period if the alleged “difficult” tag had not
been added to her unofficial resumé (not to mention the
psychological trauma), but her star had been on the rise.
In 1989, Sciorra’s film debut in comedy True Love led to
an Independent Spirit Award nomination. She followed this
with a starring role opposite Wesley Snipes in Spike Lee’s
Jungle Fever, which led to further critical raves. The hot
streak continued in 1992 with the number one box office hit,
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Everything came crashing
down, a career in tatters and a reputation ruined after the
alleged violent rape and years of harassment at the hands
of Weinstein. This career slump didn’t go unnoticed by
those who knew Sciorra. “Why did this woman, who was
so talented, and riding so high, doing hit after hit, then all
of a sudden fall off the map?” actress and friend Rosie
Perez told journalist Ronan Farrow about her recollections024 The Promising Young Woman Issue